KR AUDIO ELECTRONICS COMPANY HISTORY

KR AUDIO ELECTRONICS COMPANY HISTORY¹

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"We place quality above quantity."

-- Thomas Masaryk to Karl Ca= pek

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KR Audio Electronics sro was founded by Dr. Riccardo Kron, who receiv= ed his professional formation as an award winning designer for an Italian electron= ics company in the Val di Susa (Piedmont) outside o= f Turin in the 1960'= s. This company called Magnadyne, founded in 1923, was a luxury manufacturer of "hi-end" radios and then televisions with an in-house tube division. The company was privately owned an= d was noted for its fine quality and reliability.

Given that the mass produced tubes did not create the warmth and richness of real music he heard as a child when listening to his father practicing on his violin, Riccardo Kron was interested in developing a tube that would create a unique sound, but could find neither the right men nor the place for the necessary research.

Some time after the Berlin Wall fell, he saw a Czech gentleman selling N.O.S. tu= bes at a flea market in central Italy.

He began to speak with him a= nd found out that this man with a few skilled craftsmen could make Marconi tub= es (blowing the glass individually and assembling the internal systems by hand= ), but had no market for these collector's tubes. Dr. Kron insisted that if he would provide the money for the R&D, they could mak= e an audio tube (not a transmitting tube used for audio) which would revolutioni= ze current sound reproduction for high quality tube amplifiers.

In the early 1990’s, Dr. Kron's team, consisting of engineers, glass artisans, chemists, vacuum technicians, and mechanical specialists succeeded in developing the first new audio tube in 54 years. T= here had been no new audio tubes designed and produced since the 1950's.

Because it may not be possible to visit our factory to see the full extend of our craftsmanship, a high technology item is considered hand-crafted when it ma= de with tools by hand, that is someone's hand 'touched it'. In the case of KR glass envelopes, an artisan actually forms the molten glass = into the bulb by blowing a bubble in the middle of the molten glass while rotati= ng the glass and heating it at the same time.= Similar feats of artistry and science occur at each stage of the KR process.

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At KR people are doing everything. The tube is not created on a big assembly l= ine with machines doing everything. If we use molds for an item, it's a hand process with someone filling the mold and checking it for conformity. All t= he polishing and finishing is done by hand. So when you look at a KR you might notice that each piece is a little different than another. This is not a fl= aw; it is uniqueness. Every piece is a unique art object even though we pride ourselves in being a technological manufacturer.

The KR tubes are hand-crafted using our design for a higher vacuum, less grid emission and consequently longer life. This creates a very natural sound gi= ving the listener greater dynamics, more clarity (hearing more detail in recordi= ngs) and a more perfect time alignment that accurately preserves the spatial separation and sound stage of the original recording.

As a concrete example of how our technology creates a unique sound, I will use this as an illustration. More= often than not, a two-channel stereo is not connected to a home theater set-up. Many years ago, KR had an audition= in Asia with a Home Theatre demo. They were playing a = James Bond movie. The telephone rang in the film and 15 people went to their pock= ets because the sound was so real.

Now to get back to our story:

It took two years plus a sizeable capital investment to be able to come to the Milan Top Audio hi-fi fair in 1994 with two pieces of 300B type tubes.=

They were substituted in an Audio Note amplifier and the results were very good.=

The factory was assured success in that the product was innovative and the listening results were optimal. Since that time, KR has gone on to develop a regular tube line along with custom tubes such as the KR T-100, the KR 842, the KR 300BXLS and the double triode, known as the KR T-1610, the largest audio tube in the world.=

KR has also created a line of amplifiers to demonstrate what type of sound reproduction you obtain when our tubes are applied to a circuit. Auditionin= g a KR (be it tubes or the completed amplifier) creates a very natural way of hearing sound reproduced with very little distortion and as close to being = in a concert hall as you can get while remaining at home.

KR Audio Electronics is a leader in its field and has been in business for sin= ce 1992 exhibiting at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas since 1= 995 as well as many other national and international high fidelity audio shows around the world

The company has won awards f= or its tubes and amplifiers and has earned excellent reviews in the various tr= ade publications, both foreign and American.

Although Dr. Kron passed away in 2002, the work he start= ed is being continued by his team with exciting projects/designs for audio such as the Antares stereo integrated VA340, the Antares stereo integrated VA 350 and the series of 'X= ' Kronzilla amplifiers of 50 (SX and SXI, SXI with by-p= ass) and 100 (DX monoblocks) Watts which represent something of a engineering miracle from an output of only 2 audio tubes.

We are known as the tube-specialists by the audio industry and our amplifiers = are considered precision instruments for their sound quality.

We hope to be here for many more years to give the consumer a concrete sense of what Dr. Kron’s idea was concerning 2 cha= nnel stereo and what you can experience by entering his world of very neutral so= und reproduction.

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KR Audio Electronics sro, &= nbsp; &nbs= p;
Nademlejnska 1/600,
198 00 Prague 9,
Hloubetin= , = &nb= sp;
Czech Republic

www.kraudio.cz<= /a>

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1 – KR audio gratefully acknowledges the eff= orts of Cor Dekker, Rick Becker, and Bradley Smith, = who teamed up to make this document commensurate with the history and genius of= our founder Dr. Riccardo Kron<= /span>.